George Harley, F. R. S

United States Government,Anonymous

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 edition. Excerpt: ...my body hanging uncomfortably attached to the bedpost. As soon as I sufficiently recovered I untied the shirt-sleeves, crawled back into bed, put out my hands, laid hold of the bottle containing the draught of morphia, and drained it to the bottom. This was about one in the morning, and I must afterwards have slept nearly eleven hours, for it was past noon ere I awoke. My wife and friends had been in several times, but, finding me soundly sleeping, did not disturb my repose. The feeling the opiate produced was heavenly. It lifted me from purgatory into paradise, and I made to myself a vow never to be hard upon an opium-eater after having myself tasted of its bliss. Once having begun the sleeping-draught, I took regularly 3 grain of morphia with % grain of quinine every six hours, so that I was always more or less under the influence of the drug, sometimes being sound asleep and at other periods in a state of conscious divine beatitude. What a blessed change from the torments of the damned that I had previously suffered! Two months passed away in this manner, and then my confrezres began to get as anxious I should discontinue the drug as they were at first desirous I should take it. I was not, however, inclined to give up my angel friend I had too vivid a recollection of the agony previously endured, which, indeed, had been so awful that I again and again conned over the pros and cons of suicide, remembering an ancient philosopher had said that the mere act of selfinflicted death is the strongest proof that a man can give of his sovereignty over himself. I worked the problem of its expediency and its justification well out in my mind, and arrived at the conclusion that when the troubles of...